Carlos Beruff's Road to Damascus

“It wasn't a business decision,” says Carlos Beruff, sitting at his marble-topped desk at the corporate headquarters of Medallion Homes Gulf Coast Inc. in north Sarasota County. “If it was ...” Beruff chuckles. “I wouldn't do it.”

On Monday, Beruff, 58, formally announced his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by presidential candidate Marco Rubio.

To one extent, Beruff's all-in conversion from business to politics can be viewed as a surprising decision. For the past 32 years, as founder, owner and CEO, Beruff has become known as a hard-core, say-what-he-thinks, unpolitically correct, driven entrepreneur who views much of life through the prism of black-or-white business decisions.